Against a Legend
by Catchyname
Summary: A short vignette about a down-on-his-luck pilot and one last mission that pits him against a member of the infamous Zodiac squad.
1. Chapter 1

**Against a Legend**

Preface

_When Armored Core V was first released, I was disappointed the story, or lack thereof. What did capture my attention, though, was the idea of Zodiac. That idea, that you could upload someone's mind into an AC and effectively turn it into another body, was a pretty interesting take on the Human Plus concept that had been in previous games._

_Sadly, the gameplay didn't really do the idea justice, and it turned out that any Zodiac-related problem could be solved with liberal application of high explosives. But still, it's the thought that counts, right? So, I figured I'd work up the courage to write a story that really made Zodiac something more than it was in-game. And I mixed that in with my own experience of constantly losing money on missions and mercenary contracts._

_The end result is this story, which I hope you all find satisfactory._

* * *

The pilot sat at the bar and counted the motes of dust drifting through the air.

For all he cared, they could have been the ashes of his dreams. The what could've beens, should've beens, and all the rest that had haunted him since Alloy Gate City. He'd been an ace, once. Had five AC kills to his name. God only knew how many MTs and tanks he'd taken down alongside them: those kills didn't get him big bounties.

Now, though, here he was. Stuck sitting in a dingy bar in some dingy city district on the edge of nowhere. For all the pomp surrounding the uprising, for all the talk of revolution and brotherhood in the face of tyranny, he couldn't imagine his situation would be much different had he stuck with the City Police.

Against the resistance, Don Tyrell, that Father of the city, hadn't stood a chance, but where he'd failed, some nameless force with AI weapons and tenfold the firepower had won. With the Resistance reduced to bands of roving migrants, aimlessness and desperation were the rule of the day. And now the pilot was eyeball deep in debt and drinking away the boredom.

Maybe if he'd drink fast enough, he could hide in the waves of alcohol from his mechanics and their bills and all the people he owed for having once or twice gambled with them. Or something. He was steadily on his way to being too drunk to deal with sense.

And then from the side pocket on his pants, he heard it.

The beautiful sound that signified his search for meaning, for the reasons underlying life itself, had come to an end. He'd found a mission request. The last mission request he'd be taking, if his steadily rusting AC and inability to actually fix the damn thing had any say. He gave his train of thought a nice push away from that particular rail line, and toward the set of tracks that said "money at a price". He opened the file, dropped the data assistant on the table, and listened. Nothing.

He glanced down. Unvoiced, just words upon words, with a pretty picture here and there to illustrate some of the relentless, mute babble. Shame for a last request, he thought to himself. He liked hearing the voiced ones.

The pilot skimmed the briefing, didn't catch the requester's name. He scrolled down, paying only the bare minimum of attention to the fluff. From what he gleamed in spite of his scroll speed, the requester had a friend who'd lost a sister to the targets, these guys were tough, expect a prolonged engagement, could be just one but not more than two, something about settling a score - a sort of 'me or them' deal, et cetera, et cetera. And then he saw the name of the target, hidden among the endless details of the brief.

Zodiac.

He paused, for a moment. _Zodiac_. The white and pink killers of aces and the bane of Resistance stragglers. These guys were legends. Rumor had it they were all that was left of some pre-Great Destruction experiment, bodies left to rot in some long-decayed facility while their minds made cozy in those hulking ACs. Relentless and unsleeping. And utterly invincible.

"Well, shit," he muttered to his liquor. "At least this'll be an interesting send off."

He took another swig of his drink. He didn't know about the first two points, but lately that last rumor had been taking some hits to its credibility. Exactly eleven hits, specifically. Eleven burnt out mech hulks scattered across the region. No bodies. Some pilot, undoubtedly some well-known ace of the erstwhile Resistance, had been gunning for 'em. And he'd been winning. The prayers of dead pilots' lonely loved ones the region over were being answered and the plentiful bounties collected.

And here, delivered to him quite literally in the palm of his hand, was his chance to cash in on the death of one of those legends.

All he needed to do was kill it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

30 minutes later, the pilot found himself stepping out of a truck, third in a convoy. In front of him was the fortified bunker that served as his clan's garage, technicians and loaders stuffing ammo and armor kits into the idling vehicles.

"Owe me 30 for hitching a ride, y'know," said the driver, an older man with a grizzled face. "Need to help pay off the fuel costs."

"I can give you 10 now, but I'll have to withdraw from my account for the rest. I don't carry much when I go the bar," replied the pilot. He was preoccupied with the data assistant, idly thumbing the scroll bar through the request without really taking any of it in.

"You can just pay me next time we see each other, but only 'cause we've both known each other for a while," winked the driver. "Not the first time you've said that you're getting out of the business."

"This time'll be the last, for sure. ACs don't pay for themselves."

"'Least not with the missions you take."

The driver put his truck back in gear as engines in the convoy started up again. The goods were all loaded and the lead vehicle was getting ready to go. The techs and loaders had returned to the above-ground hangars, and the guards began lifting the base's road barriers.

"See you around."

"Yeah."

The driver swung the door closed and the truck began to move.

As the trucks drove off into the horizon, the pilot walked to the bunker. The guards gave him no trouble once he showed his clan authorization. He'd already notified the quartermaster and appropriate officers of the assignment before the truck ride, and they in turn had told the appropriate service personnel to begin prepping his AC. Efficient indeed. The clan bureaucracy was a machine kept well-oiled by virtue of being on constant war footing.

Entering the bunker, he found that the cool air was a nice reprieve from the perpetual heat of the wasteland desert. He made his way through the technicians, logistics guys, and the occasional flight-suited pilot. The hustle was nothing new to the pilot, even with his absence. There was always another war brewing between clans.

It didn't take long before he had reached the cargo elevator, and he soon noticed a familiar face among the crowd of groundcrew heading down.

"Been a while since I've seen you 'round here," grinned the mechanic. "I was getting' worried that you'd never show up again. A month's absence is longtime compared to some of the flyboys around here."

"Yeah, it is," the pilot replied. "This'll probably be the last time you'll see me here, too. I don't plan to get back into work after this one."

"Still owe me 30k for the armor workups," said the mechanic.

"Yeah, I know. After this, though, I'll get the money to you"

"That much? After the ammo costs and repairs? You'll have that much?"

"Yeah, I'm sure of it."

"If not, you could always sell the AC to some other guy. Sure a rookie would rather that than the pieces of junk we usually issue 'em," said the mechanic.

The pilot didn't respond.

After a few minutes of silence the elevator reach its destination, and the crew stepped off into a narrow, dimly lit hangar space. Several ACs were on lift platforms, all in a row and painted in the clan's red-and-gold pattern. Armored trucks and munitions were off the sides while techs ran systems diagnostics and double checked the weapons prior to loading them onto the ACs.

The pilot and mechanic kept walking, eventually coming to the end, where a midweight biped stood ready. It too was painted red-gold, although rust had started accumulating near the limb and finger joints. The storm-cloud-and-lightning emblem had started fading here and there, and the paint near the arms wasn't quite as nice as it used to be. Still, all said, it was a beautiful and adaptable piece of technology.

"What weapons loadout do you think you'll need for this one?" asked the mechanic. He had turned his attention to a diagnostic screen near the side of the hangar, and had begun running hydrogen supply and engine integrity checks.

"The usual. A UBR-05 and an Au-V-G37. I don't care which goes on which side. No secondaries. Keep the part layout as well," said the pilot. He was walking around the AC, inspecting the booster engines. He hoped maintenance wouldn't take too long. He needed to head out soon to make it to the rendezvous, or else he risked the client choosing a different partner.

"You know there's an Au-V-G39 now. The 37's outdated," said the mechanic. "The 39's RoF is faster."

"Yeah, but the 37 is what I own. I don't have a 39. The difference isn't worth the paying extra 60 thousand" replied the pilot. "Besides, the 37 hits harder."

In truth, he didn't want the expense of upgrading his armament. It was primarily due to the grace of the clan that he was even able to keep the AC for as long as he had. And he was well aware of how that grace would soon begin running out.

"Mind if I ask what the mission is?" The mechanic was still running through the different status screens. From what the pilot could see, so far so good.

"Well…" Then it hit him, again. He was seriously going to do this.

"I'm gonna take down a Zodiac," the pilot finished.

"No shit?" The mechanic looked up from his screen in surprise. "This really will be the last time I see you here. How long do you think you'll last? A minute, maybe? We lost four guys to one of them a couple weeks ago."

"I've got a partner in this, don't worry," said the pilot. Somehow, hearing his own words didn't comfort him.

"I've heard that they've taken down dozens of pilots" the mechanic continued. "Not just the rookies. Mainly experienced ones. Veterans."

"Just finish the diagnostics."

By now, different members of the groundcrew had arrived. Some operated the cranes which began lifting the appropriate weapons into the hands of the AC, while the rest of the crew tested finger mobility, recon unit deployment, and simulated booster fire. Testing the weapon-switch rack on the back of the AC wasn't necessary this time.

Warning lights came on, and the pilot moved to join the mechanic near the wall of the hanger. After a few moments, steam surrounded the AC as the boosters mock-fired.

"Boosters are green," called out a tech.

"All joints green."

"Recons are green"

"All right, you're good to go," said the mechanic. He stilled seemed as though he was looking at a dead man. "The Stork pilot said he's gonna carry you out with squad 3, just to help ensure safe transit through the contested areas. That'll be about 30 minutes, and then you'll break off from them and head to the rendezvous with the mission requester."

"Alright," said the pilot. He had already picked up his helmet out of the locker, and was in the process of putting it on. The helmet's visor, which would be filled with holographic readouts during the mission, was at the moment nothing more than big darkened glass lense. With the helmet on, he felt almost blind in the dim bunker.

Walking toward the AC, he felt his adrenaline begin to pump. A mobile ladder had been rolled up, and a tech punched some inputs in his data pad, wired up to the AC. A mechanism near the back of the core moved, and the top opened like a hatch. He'd heard jokes about AC actually standing for "Armored Coffins", although he'd never given it much thought. Now, though, he could see how that moniker came about.

He climbed up the ladder, entered the darkened core, and pulled the hatch closed.

In the dark, the pilot felt almost claustrophobic: the inside of an AC is not by any means spacious. Even after having done this job for so long that he knew the inside by heart, the darkness still got him. Though he couldn't see them, he knew that switches, dials, screens, and knobs encircled him. One wrong move meant spending even more precious time carefully troubleshooting.

"Booting OS."

He heard the mechanic's announcement through his helmet comms, and instantly the cockpit began to brighten as the operating system came to life. Soon, the entire core seemed to become transparent and the sides blended into the hangar. Aside from the very edges around the screens, he had complete visibility. He began the process of double checking the system settings. The AC's arm movements were keyed to the two joysticks, the fingers keyed to the triggers, the legs and their preset movements to the foot pedals, the boosters to one pair of buttons on the joysticks, and the head to his own helmet. Looking through the AC's cameras, it was as though he'd grown 4 meters taller. His brief reverie was interrupted by another announcement.

"OS check complete, shutting down."

And as quickly as the core had brightened, it became dark again. The walls reappeared and the pilot felt as though he had shrunken down into a pygmy. He should have been used to the pre-mission check by now. Sitting in the darkness, the pilot felt shaking as the lift brought the AC out of the bunker and to surface, where the Stork would pick it up and carry it to the mission zone. He took a deep breath to calm himself, and prepared for the ride over.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Five minutes to drop. Booting OS". The stork pilot's announcement, immediately followed by the steadily increasing glow of the screens and heads-up display, shook the pilot into awareness. His ran his tongue along his chapped lips – should've had more water to wash down the cheap whiskey, he realized – and idly thumbed the joysticks. The anticipation of action was always the worst part of the sorties. He couldn't wait for the rush of combat, the seamless, instinctual flow that allowed him to _truly_ live. Even if it was just this one last time before he hung up his g-suit for good.

The pilot checked the array of display screens that surrounded him. The land around them was only rock and sand, a small dust storm far off in the distance the only feature that broke up the monotony. The stork had long since left the flight group, and was now alone in a vast desert, kicking up dust devils and debris in its wake as it headed toward the rendezvous. But not quite alone. He realized that the distant cloud of dust was from the client's stork. As the two helicopters approached and began to enter formation, the pilot could make out a worn, but distinctive thorny rose emblem adorning the right nacelle of the client's stork. It seemed almost like the emblem of some royal house from a time long passed. Idly, he wondered what sort of history lay behind such an ornate emblem. His own was a simple interlocked three ring design, one colored red and the other two white. Completely unremarkable, but then again he'd never given much thought to standing out in a crowd. Not that there was much of a crowd to stand out in, at the moment.

The two ultra-heavy helicopters continued on in tandem, the operators undoubtedly finalizing flight plans. The pilot just sat back in his seat and waited. Before long, the scattered metal structures of an empty fuel depot came into view. First one, and then more, the structures increased in number and concentration as they flew onward. Within the minute, the pilot could make out what looked to be the main compound, a tangled mass of metal piping and concrete buildings that clung to the side of a sandy cliff.

And hovering above them, shining in white and a deep, blood-red pink, were two armored storks and two ACs below them. Zodiac.

Obscured by distance and wind-blown sand, the pilot could just barely make out a heavyweight reverse jointed AC, with what looked like a medium-range loadout and a Lancelot head part. Its partner, a heavyweight biped, was packing at least one shotgun and a grenade launcher. Probably equipped for a close-range brawl, he thought. His own AC couldn't outrange them, and he didn't like his odds at having to out-maneuver them. He would have to rely on his HE ammo and superior rate of fire to carry him through this.

"Entering the mission area. Deploying AC."

The stork pilot's voice rang out, followed by the metallic clang of the disengaging clamps. On the leftmost screen, through his peripheral vision, he saw the client deploy as well. The two ACs kicked up dust clouds as soon as they impacted the ground, rear boosters igniting soon after as the pilot and client began racing toward the enemy.

The Lancelot-headed one had split from the brawler, ducking behind pipes as it began opening fire with what the pilot now realized was a Karasawa TE weapon. Hot plasma seared the building behind him as he moved in concert with the Lancelot. It was almost unreal, seeing the enemy duck and weave so gracefully among the pipes and buildings, as though it were a living creature, a red-trimmed predator, rather than a bipedal tank.

It became a dance: boost left-move back behind the concrete-boost right-fire the 37-pop off a round from the grenade launcher pop off three- boost further right- forward-left–right-back – the pilot was immersed in the fight. The Lancelot's maneuverability was something to behold. As the pilot weaved between buildings, he lost track of the client and the biped brawler. The Lancelot was unnaturally accurate, grenade rounds exploding too close for comfort around the pilot's AC even at range. Dodging another blast of the Karasawa, the pilot ducked behind a pipe, struggling to get his bearings and formulate a plan.

Something landed heavily beside him. He turned and saw – white and pink. The brawler had taken cover beside him, harried by the client's unrelenting gunfire and unnoticing of the pilot for now. It was definitely a machine, thought the pilot, not some beast covered in metal armor. The exposed wires and dented metal worn away by heavy gunfire left no doubt about that. But then, why did they move as though they were living? The Zodiac rotated, no, _turned his head like a man_, not with machine-precision of the usual head-tracking mount, but with the smooth motion of a living creature and for a moment, he thought the speck of light moving along the head unit blinked like an_ eye_. The pilot wasted no time, moving the joystick and raising the grenade launcher toward his quarry. The brawler jumped backward, trailing flame and smoke as its boosters ignited. A shotgun blast hit the pilot's AC, rocking the cockpit and damaging the head part's camera, leaving a multitude of spindly fractures across the monitor screens. The pilot fired in response, his grenade going wide as the Zodiac boosted right. He boosted backward, firing the G37 in a wild spray that only by the grace of his FCS managed to impact the brawler. Another shotgun blast landed on the pilot's AC with a metal-rending crunch. To the pilot's relief, that one had hit his heavily armored core straight on, limiting the damage immensely.

Before the pilot could return fire, a spray of bullets caught the Zodiac by surprise, ripping into the unit's left arm and forcing it behind another array of metal piping. The client's AC came flying from the air, breaking concrete and metal as it landed and continued its assault, chipping away at the brawler and leaving gray scars where the unit's paint had been shot off. The pilot paid no heed to him, boosting further away in search of a vantage point on a nearby pillar. His close encounter had lasted less than seven seconds.

From the top of the concrete pillar, the pilot could see the cratered and smoking battlefield in its entirety. The client and brawler were duking it out on the outskirts of the depot's center, but the Lancelot was nowhere to be seen. The pilot sent out a recon unit, letting the UAV do its scouting while he quickly moved into the cover of a cluster of buildings and piping. He waited a moment, and sure enough, the recon unit displayed a 1 on his HUD: enemy unit found. The pilot executed a series of boost jumps toward the top of a nearby structure, the impulse from each boost weighing down on him like water. The UAV's report told him that the Zodiac was likely moving to flank the client as he was engaged in a fight with the brawler. In its eagerness for an easy kill, the Lancelot had relegated the pilot to a secondary priority. He'd make sure that would be a fatal mistake.

Navigating through the smoke, the pilot moved in for the kill, unloading as much of his ammunition from above as he could toward the enemy. While the Zodiac's reactive armor blocks detonated several of the pilot's shots before they could hit their mark, a multitude of HEAT rounds and grenades impacted the Lancelot, ripping off thin panels of armor and turning the white paint into a charred black. He saw the Zodiac's Karasawa letting loose arcs of energy as the Lancelot attempted to charge the weapon, the Zodiac turning to face him so that it could return fire in kind. The pilot instinctively weaved back and right, a cloud of broken concrete and dust chasing after him as he dodged rounds from the Lancelot's grenade launcher.

After several such maneuvers, he thought that he'd put sufficient distance between him and the Zodiac, and began executing a boosted turn in order to re-approach it from another angle. No sooner had the pilot engaged the rear boosters when he caught a blue flash out of the corner of his eye, filtered into a glowing, fuzzy line though the cracked monitor. He cut power to the boosters and dropped 15 meters to the ground with a hard thump, the sudden impact bruising his arm on the instrument panel. Overhead, a brilliant blue beam streaked across the space where he'd previously been, leaving a trail of crackling ozone and static discharge in its wake. Had he taken the full brunt of the charged Karasawa, the heat by itself would have be enough to melt wiring and armor, let alone taking into account the force of the plasma impact. As it was, the pilot almost thought he could feel the static charge through the insulated cockpit.

Having avoided the blast, the pilot began moving through buildings again, the clumsy leg parts of the AC carrying him on a bumpy ride as the boosters recovered from their sudden shutdown. The recon unit had traced a path through the depot, putting out another alert to the pilot's HUD: 300 meters, 9 o'clock angle. Refresh. 250 meters, 9 o'clock angle. Refresh. 200. The Lancelot was closing in fast.

The pilot boosted again, moving toward some pipes and fuel tanks, the AC's engines vibrating in an almost-staccato: boost-halt-boost-halt-boost. 150 meters, 9 o'clock. Refresh. 120. Refresh. 100.

The pilot pushed his AC past the fuel tanks and piping, still out in the open. The Lancelot came moving into view. It had switched out its Karasawa for a lesser, lance-shaped plasma rifle. A series of rapid, uncharged shots hit the pilot's AC, each shot impacting with the sound of bubbling metal. The pilot dodged another grenade round, all the while backing up as the Lancelot came ever-closer. He let off round after round HEAT and grenade at the Zodiac: its reactive armor couldn't counter all of it. Already dented and sparking with broken wiring, one HEAT round knocked a hole in the Zodiac's core armor, exposing part of the generator. A grenade round took off its right arm, hand and plasma rifle falling to the dusty ground. Still the Lancelot continued to press its attack, firing its RF12 at the pilot as it charged forward. Whoever this thing's pilot was, if there was even anything in it that could be called a pilot, they weren't going to give up and retreat. The Lancelot never so much as faltered amidst the hail of ballistics.

With a click, the G37 ran dry. No secondaries meant that the pilot only had his grenade launcher to fall back on. He checked the ammo counter on his HUD. Four rounds left. Not much of a fallback.

The Lancelot continued onward, boosting closer. The pilot thought through his options in a blink. Left with no choice, he began closing distance with the Zodiac in kind. His timing wouldn't have to be exact, but it had to at least be close, lest he go down with the enemy. The Lancelot seemed to realize the pilot's intention and began taking leaps backward, boosters flaring with each jump. But it couldn't get far enough fast enough. The pilot fired. The round impacted. And the entire area seemed to come alive with flame and light.

The pilot's AC was intact enough that it survived the blast and protected the pilot, though he could still feel the massive change in pressure even within the cockpit. The fireball had engulfed both of them. As the dust settled, he saw the Lancelot, core on fire, in the debris. In those final moments before the Zodiac's engine overheated and shattered the unit, the AC's head turned toward him and, though it may have been a trick of the light and smoke, seemed to convey a curious _expression_. And then there was nothing left of it.


End file.
